It's that time of year again to order curriculum for the new school year!  Hmmmm, well we are not yet done with last school year, since we have been extra busy with our move from Texas to Virginia. Ordering curriculum is the furthest thing from my mind right now.  However we are winding down and I did promise to share how some of our new curriculums worked for us.

     Math has always been a torture around here, probably because I don't enjoy math. The kids tend to pick up on my interests.  Although I have tried to approach math positively, I'm afraid I didn't exude enough enthusiasm for the endeavor. (Alliteration is more fun.)

     We have always used A Beka math and as my daughter started ninth grade this past year, I knew I met my match. Even though I took honors math courses in high school, and the easiest math class I could take at Trinity University (a private college in San Antonio) was pre-calculus, I spent a ot of time with our neighbor who enjoyed math. He was getting his teaching degree in math and I used to babysit his daughters. I spent every evening at the kitchen table with him, bored out of my gourd, trying to understand, when his wife would tell him it was late and I had to go home. He would be stuck on one problem and his daughters would tell me later that he stayed up all night conquering that one math problem. Why?

    I heard a lot of great things about Teaching Textbooks at my Tapestry of Grace yahoo group (Although we all use the same history curriculum, we get very off topic at the main TLT group.  It is amazing the things I have learned there.) Anyway, there is usually one consistently positive comment about this curriculum, which is that it helps the kids who don't understand math to finally comprehend and even to embrace it. Hmmmm,  the embracing part sounds impossible. The consistent negative comment I've heard is that it is not enough meat for the math major.   (By the way, that comment is up to debate as I have met National Merit Scholars who used TT. Therefore I doubt that it's not meaty enough for preparation for college math majors.) No problem! My kids have no interest in majoring in the math or sciences, so they fit in the first group perfectly. We test drove the product at the homeschool fair last May and it was looking good. I ordered it and it arrived in a couple of weeks.  

    My son got the seventh grade math. It downloads onto the computer, which was easy to do. He was always my most resistant child to math, often gazing at the paper for hours instead of conquering. I tried the old fashioned method of only assigning odds or evens, I even gave him a choice, but he still took hours.  I knew he was quite capable because whenever we play board games he is the official score keeper and he can compute the scores well. 

     Even though I am not a fan of computer games, since they do not encourage brain development, I thought the cost/benefit analysis allowed for this math program. It was a huge success!  Two brothers have developed this program and use humor to make something tedious more interesting. My son worked out the math on paper, but plugged in the answer into the program and got instant feedback if he made a mistake or if it was correct.  He carried an A+ average throughout the year and some days he even did an extra lesson. Math was always completed within the alloted hour.

      Then we moved from Texas to Virginia. The program was installed on the hard drive of my son's desk top computer. We were taking my husband's laptop, but he was hesistant to install the math program on the laptop and let my son loose on it. Sometimes my kids change  settings and we needed this laptop to remain in contact with real estate agents, lenders and title companies in Texas and Virginia. What to do?  I did not want to put math aside until we moved into a house and got my son's desktop up and running. He'd lose the momentum of what he had learned. Also, how long would it take to move into a house and get our goods delivered?

     My son solved this problem by saying that he would do all of his work in the workbook and check his work with the answer key. I was dubious, knowing his history of losing focus and staring at a workbook page.  History repeats itself, as Patrick Henry always says, and what would make this time any different? Well, it was different! He completed the program, as scheduled, the beginning of April!  Teaching Textbooks had made math such a positive experience for him, that he was no longer dependent on a cute computer program with bells and whistles to conquer!  Yea!!!!!  

     How about my daughter? She did Algebra I this year. With Algebra I, you insert disks as needed into the computer, without downloading onto the hard drive.  There is a disk for the lesson and sample problems. Then she does the work in the book. Next she checks her work and any she missed she can insert a disk to explain those problems. I had tried to keep up with her Algebra I. For me it was a refresher course, but once we put our Texas house on the market, I was not able to continue. Thankfully, Teaching Textbooks is not dependent on me for success. She plugged away, missing a few days here and there due to busy days on the road traveling and house hunting,  and finished by the end of May.  She struggled a bit in the beginning. A few algebraic concepts threw her and she failed a few tests.  I'd have her study those parts and retest. Through most of the year she carried a B average but by the time we moved, she was making A's on her tests.  Part of her problem is that she was not asking for help when she hit weak spots. She just kept plugging along. Then she'd take the test and the very problems she missed in daily work were the same ones she missed on the test.

     It could be argued that I should manage her daily work more closely. However she is of the age that she needs to be less dependent on me and learn how to narrow down her own weak spots.  This is what she'll need to do in college when I'm not around, so she might as well learn it now. Furthermore, since she wants to be a teacher, learning this skill now will help her pinpoint weak spots with her students.  Over the year she basically learned how to study and her scores improved.

     Yes, I'd say that TeachingTextbooks is a success!